Three PhD students selected to receive Purdue Forever Fellowship
Three AAE Ph.D. students have been awarded the Purdue Forever Fellowship.
Elizabeth Benitez, Jeremy Marcum, and Miguel Ramirez will receive a $5,000 scholarship. Only domestic Ph.D. students who passed qualifying exams were eligible to apply for the scholarship. The graduate committee reviewed applications and chose the fellowship recipients.
The Purdue Forever Fellowship was made possible by the McAllister-Elrod family.
Benitez is studying experimental hypersonic transition under Professor Steven Schneider. Specifically, Benitez is looking at instabilities in separated flow caused by shock-boundary layer interactions at Mach 6 with the Boeing/AFOSR Mach 6 Quiet Tunnel at the airport. To accomplish that, Benitez is building an interferometer that will allow for sensitive, high-frequency optical measurements of density fluctuations in the separated region of the flow.
“This research is important because any hypersonic vehicle with control surfaces, such as a launch vehicle, may experience this flow, and it is necessary to know how the natural fluctuations will effect transition on the vehicle,” Benitez says. “Additionally, my interferometer can help others in my lab make these optical measurements for their projects.
“Receiving this fellowship is significant for me because I previously was working as a full-time engineer in industry for five years before leaving my job to return to graduate school. I took a large pay cut to be here, but love my project, and am grateful to have this fellowship help support my research.”
Marcum’s research is focused on better understanding hypergolic combustion behavior to improve the performance and reliability of rocket engines.
“Finances were a big reason that I considered not attending graduate school. This fellowship reduces the financial impact of that decision and helps me to instead focus on learning and working to contribute knowledge to my research topic,” says Marcum, whose advisor is Timothee Pourpoint, an associate professor in AAE. “I am very grateful for the opportunity.”
Ramirez’s research is in advanced composite modeling and characterization, specifically simulation of progressive failure in additively manufactured short fiber composite materials and composite systems for compression molding used in aerospace and automotive industries. Computational damage mechanics is used for virtual analysis of material performance in the virtual lab environment to guide decision-making toward optimal design of composite systems and structures.
Ramirez says those computational tools help Boeing and its material suppliers to accelerate the certification by analysis of the composite parts and decrease the amount of experimental proof testing.
“The Purdue Forever Fellowship inspires me to further pursue my research passion, and it provides me a unique opportunity to concentrate on my Ph.D. research goals,” says Ramirez, who is studying under Professor Byron Pipes, John L. Bray Distinguished Professor of Engineering.